by Paul Carter
I got nervous as Russell and Eliot began walking me through the first shot and I started to realise that lots of money was involved, that eight people on the crew and dozens of others representing harbour safety, the marine police and the council were all there watching, and the knock-on effect this had on all the ferries, tour boats and public transport that come and go from the epicentre of the harbour and were now on hold while we got this shot. In fact, the whole day was going to be spent collecting what would equate to somewhere around six to eight minutes of screen time on the final cut.
‘Right, so we’re going to be tracking from that boat there,’ Russell said, pointing at a special camera boat rig, then pointing out that he had a camera on top of the Harbour Bridge, another one on a special stick on the jetty, and one on a fucking helicopter as well.
‘Okay, then,’ my voice had turned into a nervous squeak.
Mat to my right was confidently nodding while the sound recordist Jason North was wiring me up and saw the shit I was packing. ‘Don’t worry, champ, you’ll piss this in,’ Mat said. I faked a smile and got nauseous.
In this scene, Mat and I, respectively dressed as 18th-century English ship’s officer and convict, had to row an equally period-accurate boat into the harbour, stopping as close as possible to the actual point where the real First Fleet rowed ashore. This involved getting the shot from multiple angles while we faultlessly rowed like the wind, avoiding the world’s second-largest cruise ship moored at the overseas passenger terminal. We were sitting next to each other with an oar each, rowing towards number 6 quay but not facing the direction we were going. ‘I’m fucked already.’ I looked at Mat who wasn’t even sweating yet.
‘Mate, stick to the dialogue,’ he said, laughing. ‘Whatever the fuck happens, just make sure we don’t row too close to that cruise liner, okay?’
Russell’s camera boat started to pull closer and he gave us some direction via a radio transmitter under our seat. ‘Guys, just make sure you don’t get too close to the liner.’ We nodded and I glanced over my shoulder to check; there was noise, lots of people cheering, and we looked up to see hundreds of silver-haired pensioners waving at us from several different decks way up in the air above us.
‘Stand by, camera rolling,’ said the voice under my seat, and then we rowed, big, steady, we-could-do-this-shit-for-a-living rowing. ‘That’s great, guys, keep going, Paul look over to your right at the Opera House, Mat at the Harbour Bridge, yes, perfect, we’re pulling back and coming around towards the front, just keep going, yes, oh, the light is perfect there, not too close to the . . . turn left, left, the other left, fuckin’ port, to port—’
Bang! the hard metallic clang of wood into world’s second-largest cruise liner caused the pensioners to go into hyperdrive. Then we heard, ‘Get that thing away from my ship!’ and Mat and I nearly capsized in shock as the booming voice of God came down over our heads and reverberated across Sydney Harbour.
‘And that’s the world’s second-largest penis speaking into the world’s second-largest loudspeaker,’ Mat said and grinned at me.
Woop woop woop! We jumped again and spun around to see the water police beside us. ‘Gents, throw us your line there and we’ll give you a quick tow over to where you’re supposed to be,’ one of the water rats said.
I threw them our line and soon we were back in the right place and ready to do our dialogue. This involved me pulling out a painstakingly replicated copy of an early map from the time of the First Fleet, making sure we didn’t drift back for a second time into the second-largest penis. It worked, somehow, I have no idea how, and my brain regurgitated all my dialogue with no mistakes.
‘Got it, that’s perfect.’ Russell was happy.
They got the big sweeping visuals, the close-ups, the whole introduction to the series. After we climbed out of the boat and waited for the next location move, another chap appeared in front of Mat and I holding collapsible chairs with built-in shade and proceeded to ask us about food. ‘Hi, guys, I’m Bill, the runner. Coffee, sandwich, Danish, smoke, bacon-and-egg roll, newspaper, phone, whadya need?’ Mat and I exchanged blank looks. In front of us the crew were packing up what looked like half a tonne of gear into huge cases.
‘Hi, Bill,’ I began, ‘um, are we supposed to sit in the shade sipping a latte and watching them work?’ Behind Bill I could see one guy tightening his back brace, trucks were pulling up and everyone was talking into two-way headsets and phones at the same time with both hands full of gear.
‘Yup, you’re the talent, that’s the way it works.’
I was already backing my wet arse towards crisp canvas about to say, ‘Fair enough, Bill, I’ll have a double Macallan 18, no ice, a number five Montecristo and today’s Sydney Morning Herald, please, my good man,’ but Mat spoke first. ‘No, no, we’ll jump in and help,’ so we did.
The next location was just plain funny. After their research department had pinpointed as best they could the exact place where the First Fleet pitched their tents on the first night, we replicated that as well. As convict I prepared the first meal followed by the first spew. Considering the state of the food left onboard after almost a year at sea, you can imagine the choice was a bit rough. Dead weevils, rotten once-salted beef, pork or mutton, dried peas, flour, cornmeal and water all makes good glue but would’ve tasted like shit.
The governor chose this spot to make camp because there was a naturally occurring water source coming up through the ground on the western side of what is now Hyde Park. The water formed a natural channel to the cove down present-day Market and King streets in the city. There was a drought in 1789 so reservoirs or ‘tanks’ for storing the water were cut into the sandstone sides of the channel. Called Tank Stream, it was the new colony’s primary source of water for the next 40 years; as Sydney grew the stream became an open drain and by the 1930s it had turned into a stormwater drain. The whole great modern city now sits directly above Tank Stream, and it’s still there, still accessible in a section running a diagonal line near the corner of Pitt and Hunter streets. A 225-year-old time capsule preserved.
Russell and Eliot wandered over in the afternoon sun, so very casual, relaxed, all-in-a-day’s-work-and-shit; I was still trying to get my head around what they’d already achieved that morning. It wasn’t just Mat and I working that day, the other two presenters were filming with other crews as well. While we were rowing into that cruise liner, Giovanna was in a two-seater submarine looking at a Japanese mini-sub that came into Sydney Harbour during World War Two and Andrew was climbing over the Harbour Bridge. We’d also been told that at some point later in the day one of us was going to get strapped into a personal jet pack and sent into the harbour to fly about 8 metres in the air over the water. Tethered via a big hose connected to a powerful mobile floating pump, the presenter would literally fly about like Buzz Lightyear. I prayed it wouldn’t be me.
For this next shot, though, Mat and I walked down an alleyway following an official from Sydney Water to a nondescript recessed concrete stairway that ended at an ominous-looking steel and wood door. Mat and I were about to enter the bowels of the city. The Tank Stream had not been a sewer for a very long time, but what’s down there was far more terrifying than long gone poo. The squeezer ratio had doubled; Sydney Water were right on their game and very organised. We needed all kinds of permission and permits to get down there and it had to be ventilated for eight hours prior to our arrival. We entered a large room just below the surface with benches and rows of safety gear neatly hung on hooks in order of size. It was very nicely done, a bit Better Homes & Gardens The Bunker Edition. After a detailed briefing from our guide and another one from Russell on the shots he wanted to get, we accessed the Tank Stream via a vertical shaft through a hatch inside a small room at one end of the bunker. ‘If there’s a sudden storm, this will fill up to the top in seconds, so we need to be ready,’ our guide reminded us.
It was a perfectly round tunnel, big enough to stand up in places, carved out b
y hand by convicts of the First Fleet, each individual tool strike leaving a pockmarked surface stretching into the black damp recesses beyond the reach of my torchlight. It was quiet down there, with a palpable sense of history. We moved slowly through the tunnel, following the trickle of clear water flowing down the centre. It was clean, there was no bad smell or debris, nothing offensive, until we got to the narrowest point at the end.
I shone my torch ahead of me and leant forward to look. ‘Why are the walls moving?’
‘Oh, it’s just a few roaches,’ I heard someone say behind me.
Everyone has a thing, it might be snakes or rats or spiders or poodles. Mine is cockroaches, because years ago I woke from a drunken sleep to discover I had one deep inside my right ear, and it made me crazy. I ended up in hospital screaming and twitching in time to its death throes while a doctor sat on me and a nurse injected oil into my ear.
Every hair on my neck stood up, my ear canals tried to close, film crews and squeezers were scattered and Mat got trampled as I fled towards street level. Now that’s what you call talent.
I’ll stop there—so much more happened, and that was just the first episode.
SPEED WEEK 3,
2013
THE LAST TIME I saw the BDM-SLS it was rolling back into its trailer on Corowa’s main runway in March 2012. I was so sure I would never see her again, at least not in the form of a motorcycle.
I was wrong; somehow, I don’t know how, she had remained intact, quietly tucked away in a corner for a full year. I had not heard from Colin, Rob or Ed; we had all been so busy with our lives none of us realised the Dry Lakes Racers Association was successfully granted permission to run Speed Week on the salt a month earlier than usual, and that the salt was in good condition. But more importantly, it had not rained in months and did not look likely to.
David Hinds from the DLRA called me to ask why he hadn’t heard from us and whether we were going to the salt this year.
I was sitting in my car about to drive out of a multi-storey car park in the city. I froze. ‘Yup, Dave, I’ll see you there.’
Several phone calls later the whole thing cranked into life for the third time. We only had two weeks to prepare, but after two years of trying to make it to Speed Week we had the prep side down to a fine art.
So Speed Week 2013 looked like it might actually happen this time. I drove out into the sun feeling euphoric; salt fever would arrive next like a freight train. Those two weeks passed fast: the boys dusted off the bike and reported nothing whatsoever was amiss; I filled out my paperwork, booked flights and pulled out the 25-year-old racing leathers Erwin had lent me last year and gave them a good rub down with beeswax and lanolin. I also pulled out my new gloves, replaced after poor Diego lost one last year, and of course that carbon helmet, now cleaned of Erwin’s manky dog’s urine. I had spent two weeks working on it only because I knew I’d be in trouble out there on the salt in 50-degree heat in a black helmet trying to concentrate on riding and not the acrid smell of dog piss. I walked about under the sun in my backyard with the visor down and the vents closed, smelling only cleaning chemicals that made me slightly dizzy, but not piss. It was completely pee-free.
The night before my early flight to Adelaide I carefully packed my gear into a big hold-all bag, going over everything. My kit was laid out on the floor in the garage so I could systematically check it, pack it and know it’d be ready when I needed it. Sid was quietly playing with my socket set as he often did when I was working on a bike or just tinkering in the garage. He had just turned two and was bang in the middle of ‘potty training’—or ‘helmet training’, because it made no difference to him where he took a shit—and he did, just like that. I was distracted 20 feet away with my head in a storage box looking for rechargeable batteries when the chain of events, which I’d lined up to let happen, joined the dots in my head.
First it was a little grunt, followed by the smell; I knew before I turned around what I was going to see. Take one post-spaghetti-bolognaise-fed toddler, place padded comfy-looking receptacle within range, in this case my clean lid sitting hollow side up and supported on all sides, for protection in transit, on top of my leathers and boots, then simply turn your back and let it happen. Sid was not wearing a nappy and, unlike his sister who was very good at announcing her intentions, he simply gave you a three-second warning before he defecated on the spot. So we always had his potty within his window, but this time his potty was not in the garage, so he just improvised and went ahead and backed one out in my lid. ‘Daddy, ka ka,’ his little voice came seconds later. I turned around and, yes, there he was, bless him.
I didn’t react, I just picked him up and carried him into the bathroom and cleaned him up. We walked back down to the garage together and he went quietly back to playing with my socket set while I dropped a thousand dollars of carbon-fibre helmet into a plastic bag and threw it in the bin.
On the final approach into Adelaide, I started going through all the things that would happen next: the phone calls, messages and emails telling me Speed Week was cancelled when I got off the plane. But not this time. This time Rob Dempster was there to pick me up and we drove over to his place near the city and spent the afternoon packing up his four-wheel drive for the four days on the salt. Rob was very generously taking his own vehicle, and thank god he’s a four-wheel-drive enthusiast.
I stood sweating under the tin roof of his man cave in the suburbs, slightly bemused at the amount of kit he began pulling off shelves. He handed me a cold beer as soon as I walked in then pulled out a checklist from his shirt pocket and scanned the expanse of his shed. ‘Mate, we can’t cop a squat out there can we?’ he asked. Picking up a twelve-pack of toilet paper and folding shovel with a flat face and a vicious-looking serrated edge, he snapped and twisted its parts together then urgently paced up the row of shelves, rather like a man in dire need of a poop or about to engage in some trench warfare. ‘Right, that’s the dunny.’ He slid a huge grip bag across the floor.
‘There are no toilets out there, right?’ he asked.
‘Well, as far as I know there’s toilets on the salt in the pit lane, but nothing in the camp, or perhaps there’s a couple in the camp . . .
He laughed. ‘Well, you’re gonna want to use this one—it’s a proper sit-down comfortable rig with its own tent and aircon.’
I suspected he was pulling my leg but was amazed nonetheless. ‘Really?’
‘Yup.’ He walked over with another grip bag. ‘Here, take this out to the car.’ Soon there were a dozen bags lined up, all clearly marked; the man had everything. Rob takes his off-road adventures seriously, as the inside of his Pajero revealed. He had the whole thing customised with storage areas, collapsible tables, bladders for potable and grey water, full comms, navigation, shade awnings, solar panels, fridges and a butler.
Several beers later we were packed. Ed and Colin were meeting us at the uni first thing in the morning with the bike and the Commodore to tow it, then we had to swing by Steve Smith’s place and pick him up before a four-hour drive to Port Augusta, refuel and on to Iron Knob another hour southwest. Just outside Iron Knob there was a turn-off on the right on a dirt road; another three hours down that and we’d be at the lake.
Steve is one of the machinists at the uni. He’s short with a round belly, a greying goatee and an impossibly funny nature, he’s an Aussie male in the old-school, man’s man sense.You know, he’ll build a car in his shed, weld something, gas-axe something else, bash something with a big fuck-off hammer, shoot something, mow the lawn, drink a carton, then jump online and move some shares around at a tidy profit all before lunchtime.
Steve’s man cave was just like Rob’s, full of cars in various stages of undress, classic motorcycles beautifully restored, and tools, so many tools. Their caves had the same smell, motor oil mixed with paint and musty canvas with a dash of whiskey, like catching a passing whiff of Old Spice while doing an oil change. It should be turned into a cologne called ‘Sure Root’
and put in a bottle shaped like a football. Brad Pitt should do the ad, wearing comedy breasts and tossing his hair while sitting on a Holden, and they should shoot the whole thing in Steve’s shed. Brad should do it for free just to get his man cred back from Chanel, except this time he won’t get to drink the product before they start shooting. I used to work in advertising, part time, and I never comment on ads, well, apart from almost everything in the chapter called ‘Advertising’, but that particular commercial and the millions they spent to ultimately shit on a wonderful product that my mother uses as well as poor Brad—well, it was just bizarre to watch. Like fly-kicking your grandmother, once is enough.
We pulled away from Steve’s place, Rob and I in his Pajero with Colin, Ed and Steve in the Commodore pulling the bike trailer. The cars had UHF radios so as soon as we hit the highway the banter started between Colin and Rob, and didn’t stop all the way to the turn-off outside Iron Knob. We hooked up the Pajero to tow the trailer and entered the 130-kilometre bush track full of anticipation.
The DLRA had their first meeting to race on the salt here in 1990; 25 people turned up with less than ten cars to race, and only two of the cars were purpose-built salt-racing cars. Now there are almost a thousand members and most of them were already at the lake when we arrived. This is a sport, a motorsport unlike any other. It takes real commitment, and you need to be focused and very patient—just getting out to the event is a massive effort.
